YAN

  NO ONE ELSE TRAVELLED at the same direction. Everyone seemed to be either fleeing the war or going to fight in it. Yanick passed many of both. The former ones didn’t bother him neither he did them. It were the latter he had to worry about. And he did.

  With the binoculars—that’s what Ellie had called the small, heavy device she handed him before he left the compound—it was easier to stay clear. All he had to do was lift them to his face, peer through the glass, and the world collapsed into reach. Everything far became near, too near. It took time to adjust to the strange illusion, but it was worth it.

  What he first mistook for a low hanging storm cloud rolling over the forest turned out to be an army.

  A massive army.

  Tens of thousands of soldiers marching in rough formation, dust trailing behind them like smoke from a dying fire. And at the front, their banner: the Black Moon.

  They were all his kin.

  Yanick hadn’t realised there were so many of them left. Scattered across the lands, hiding under the iron grip of the Faithful, or taking refuge in the dwarven highlands. But they had endured. And now they were moving. Alive, proud, furious. Hungry for revenge. And still clinging to the same hatred.

  They wanted to kill everyone who wasn’t like them. Everyone with skin darker than theirs, who knelt to a god from the Moon. The ones they blamed for their broken lives.

  The Faithful flooded these lands like locusts, multiplied like rabbits and turned the peaceful and prosperous lives of Nordlings into a nightmare. Like vermin would.

  Yanick slipped off the road, into the trees. He couldn’t let anyone see him. If they did, they might think he was a deserter, a coward fleeing the cause. A traitor to their blood.

  One thing was true: he was heading to the mountains. Not to hide. But because she was there.

  *

  Rain had been a rare occurrence lately, but he did not welcome it. Not now. Not here. At this height, even a drizzle became a threat. The jagged rocks beneath his boots slicked over fast, turning from loose gravel to treacherous mirrors. One slip could mean a shattered leg. Or worse, he’d be left to die, unnoticed in the mist, bones lost to some crevice.

  He gritted his teeth and pressed on.

  The climb had been brutal even before the storm rolled in. With one hand locked in plaster it was nearly impossible to maintain balance. Fingers were stronger now, but the presence of the cast restricted their movement significantly. He had learned to use his hips and shoulder to lean into the rock face, to hook his boots into grooves like a mountain goat. Now, with water pouring from above in icy sheets, even that failed him.

  The wind funnelled through the narrow switchbacks like a curse, shrieking in his ears and tugging at his soaked clothes. He’d lost all feeling in his fingertips hours ago, and his knuckles were raw from dragging them across sharp stone. Sometimes he imagined the mountain growling beneath him, angry at the trespass, eager to swallow him whole.

  A few times, he had to stop, not for rest, but to fight the nausea from looking down. And the memories.

  That cliff Amaia pushed him from had been less steep and much lower than this. If he shattered his arm falling from there, he’d rather not think about what might happen to him if he slipped now.

  The path was barely a path at all. Just ledges and shadowy ridge lines, sometimes narrowing to no wider than his boot. One wrong breath and he’d tumble into the fog below.

  But still, he climbed. Each step upward a prayer. To a god that doesn’t exist. Each breath a battle. With the mountain and with himself.

  He had no tent. No fire. Only a soaked blanket rolled up in his pack and a single piece of dry bread wrapped in waxed cloth. He didn’t need more. He wasn’t planning to camp. He had to move.

  *

  The air changed. Yanick felt it before he saw it—something that didn’t want him there. The trail ended where the real border began: a ridge of dark stone, carved by time and wind, flanked by jagged pine and silence. And then he saw it.

  A spike, hammered into the earth at an angle. And on it a human skull, half-split by an iron axe lodged deep in the cranium. The weapon had rusted to the bone. Moss grew in the cracks.

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  Below it, barely legible, someone had scrawled a message in common tongue:

  YOU WERE WARNED.

  He stared at it for a long moment. The wind howled through the pass like it wanted to speak. Maybe it did. Maybe it screamed the names of others who’d come this way, thinking they could cross into dwarf lands and leave again with their heads still on their necks.

  He kept walking.

  The path narrowed to little more than goat trail. Twilight crept in, grey and thin, and with it came the smell. Woodsmoke and something else. Meat. Spiced. Cooking slow.

  It punched him in the gut, a reminder that he hadn’t eaten in nearly three days. His bread was long gone. Even his hunger had dulled into a hollow ache, something more dangerous than pain. Something quieter.

  The smell led him to the edge of a hollow between two ridges, where a village slept.

  Stone huts, squat and round, were huddled like gossiping old men around a central fire pit. No gates. No guards. Just a few goats in a pen and a pair of axes stuck in a chopping block. The fire was still glowing. And something—rabbit, maybe goat—hung over it on a spit, fat sizzling down onto the coals.

  He waited until full dark. Then he crept in.

  He moved like a shadow between the buildings, hand pressed to his ribs, plaster arm tucked tight to his chest. He crouched near the fire, reached out, slow and silent.

  A crunch. He must have stepped on a piece of brushwood.

  Yanick froze. Too late.

  A boot slammed into his side, knocking him off balance. He rolled in the dirt, came up spitting ash, only to feel cold steel at his neck.

  Then a voice, thick and gravelly, the accent unmistakable.

  “Did the skull not speak clear enough, little man?”

  Yanick didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He was too busy trying not to choke on the smell of cooked meat and burning goat hair. The other mind did not interfere, there was no danger.

  The figure loomed closer. Another joined. Then a third.

  One of them let out a low chuckle, the kind that held more amusement than menace. A sound that made Yanick’s blood itch.

  He should’ve been the one laughing. The dwarf who’d just called him a little man wasn’t taller than four feet, and that was with thick-soled boots and wild hair adding volume.

  “A Nordling? Here? Alone?” the first one said, stepping into the firelight. His beard was braided with iron rings, his axe slung across his back, still stained from whatever or whoever last met its edge.

  “Barely a kid,” said the second, older and round-faced, with a scar that split one eyebrow. “Leave him be.”

  “We should put an axe in his head,” muttered the third, not sounding entirely joking. “Or cut his hand off for stealing. Like the Faithful do.”

  “His hand is of no use even without this type of surgery,” the scarred one noted, pointing with his knife. “Look.”

  The blade hovered toward Yanick’s cast. It caught the light—dull grey plaster, streaked with dirt and old blood.

  “So it seems,” the first one grunted, folding his arms across his chest. “So. What are we going to do with him?”

  “Let’s eat first,” the second said. He gave Yanick a look that wasn’t unkind. Just tired. “Then we ask questions.”

  Yanick stayed still, half-crouched, the dirt clinging to his knees and elbows. His chest rose and fell in quick, shallow bursts. He didn’t trust the way they looked at him. Not yet.

  But the dwarves? They just sat down.

  The older one grabbed a hunk of meat with his dagger, carved off a slice of roasted goat, then stabbed it again, this time reaching it out across the fire.

  “I know you’re hungry,” he said simply, meeting Yanick’s eyes. “All you had to do was ask.”

  Full stomach made everything better. Dwarves had vodka too. It reminded Yanick of how good he can feel, no pain at all, even if it was bearable. Even if he got used to it now.

  *

  The older dwarf, Tyr, stood over him, one boot planted on the uneven floorboards, the other slightly raised, just enough for balance. His axe rested high on his shoulder, blade gleaming under the low lantern light. The stance of a warrior, but the context was ridiculous.

  Yanick lay flat on his back inside Tyr’s cramped wooden house, the smell of goat stew and smoked wood heavy in the air. His arm was stretched out, fingers twitching slightly beneath the hardened casing.

  In the corner, Tyr’s two sons played noisily—banging together carved wooden animals, their small, square hands quick and sure. Both boys had inherited their father’s stature—short limbs, wide brows, feet planted like anchors—but their energy, their quickness, that was their mother’s.

  “Ya ready?” Tyr asked, eyes fixed on the cast.

  “Have you lost your mind, old man?” his wife, Minka, snapped, storming in with a ladle still dripping stew. “You’re going to chop the boy’s arm clean off.”

  “No I won’t,” Tyr said, tightening his grip. “I’m excellent with the axe.”

  “These days are long gone,” she shot back. “Now you’re blind and stupid. Move off!”

  Tyr didn’t budge.

  “A knife?” he grumbled. “This thing on his arm’s harder than stone. You’ll need a chisel to—”

  “You’re stupid, old man,” she said again, pushing him aside with her hip. “All you need to do is this.”

  She crouched beside Yanick, her thick braid brushing the edge of his shoulder, and traced her fingers along the plaster. Her touch was firm but not unkind.

  “See these thin lines?” she said, drawing the knife slowly over them. “It’s already cracked here… and here.”

  Minka worked with practised precision, sliding the blade under the plaster where it had loosened at the edges. The cast gave way with a soft crackle and a dusty snap. Bits of the shell fell away like dried bark.

  Yanick clenched his jaw as his arm was exposed. Pale, scarred, the skin beneath faintly pruned from weeks of sweat and compression.

  “There,” she said, holding the split cast in one hand like the husk of a fruit. “Didn’t need an axe to perform surgery.”

  Tyr grunted and shouldered his weapon with a look of exaggerated disappointment.

  “You just wanted to swing that thing,” she accused.

  “Damn right I did,” he muttered, but he smiled. Just a little.

  Yanick tried to flex his fingers. Stiff. Weak. Free yet still imprisoned by pain.

  “I can’t move them,” he mumbled.

  Tyr passed him a cup. Smell of strong alcohol pulled Yanick to sitting position.

  “How long it’s been?” Minka asked. “Since you’ve broke it?”

  “Which time?” Yanick laughed and gulped the contents of the cup in one go.

  He almost choked when the door opened. When he saw her.